


A drop in the ocean (still changes the sea)

by DarkShadeless



Series: Reach for the stars (they are calling for you) [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Fairy Tale Style, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm glossing over some of it but it's not unicorns and rainbows, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Vitiate's no good terribad backstory, and his general Vitiate-y self, and that's officially the first time I've felt compelled to tag that, srsly, that tag was a mistake but its tru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 02:19:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16588907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: They say the Emperor, as a perfect example of their Order, is unmarked. Unbothered by the touch of another soul, his self is his to mould and his alone.





	A drop in the ocean (still changes the sea)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [you will bleed to death with the pain of it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916129) by [LullabyKnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell). 



> Once again I will quote LullabyKnell about the setting here: 
> 
> 'Imagine a world of soulmarks where it is not your soulmate's first spoken words to you, but instead the first spoken words of someone who would make a great mark on your soul. It could be anyone: a friend, a relative, a coworker, a lover, an enemy, a person who complimented you at an airport and you never saw them again. Some people have no marks at all; some people have more than they can count with all their fingers and toes; but most people have at least one – for someone who marked their life and soul beyond any point of return.'
> 
> Can be read as a stand-alone, though it is set in the same AU as the first part of the series.

 

They say the Emperor, as a perfect example of their Order, is unmarked.

Over a thousand years he has ruled the Empire. What mortal being could dream of keeping up with that kind of power? Who could hope to touch someone so grand? He’s above such things, above _others_. Unbothered by the touch of another soul, his destiny is his own.

He has always been and will always be. He sprung into existence whole in all of his terrible glory.

There is some truth to that.

As with so many stories, it’s not the whole of it.

 

Once, before worship and immortality, a god was a man. As every man, he did not come into the galaxy fully formed.

Once, there was a child and its name was Tenebrae.

Vitiate cast aside that name long before he became Valkorion. Given by dead parents he had no love for, who died by his hand, it was far too plebeian to be kept. There is no room for sentimentality in someone born with Darkness curled around their very soul like an affectionate cat.

No. His eyes were on the horizon and beyond from the moment he first opened them. His ears were deaf to all but the whispers that sung him to sleep long before he ever knew he was more than a farmer’s son, so much more.

The cries of his mother, the woman who kept his heritage from him? Inconsequential. The people he crushed under his foot just to see if he could, even his _father_? Ants. They were nothing and no one, their blood and terror was his due. He _deserved_ them.

Every step brought him closer to the beautiful truths the Force sings to everyone who will listen, if they dare. The Force is _power_. So much power and his for the taking, all he had to do was reach out.

Who cares what shatters under his touch? If it isn’t strong enough to withstand him, what is its worth?

Dust, dust and ashes.

He has to fear nothing and no one and he has never been so free as in that moment when all falls to ruin around him to elevate him beyond the boundaries of flesh.

Vitiate is a creature born from the death of all he might have loved and didn’t.

 

Once, there was a baby. Its name was Tenebrae and when its blood-father ordered his mistress to drown it in the well she took it and ran. She wanted her child to live.

 

(Does she regret that, before the end?)

 

Once, there was a child, who found out all it had taken for granted and struggled with was a lie. The man it thought to be its father, who believed to be its father, raised his hand against its mother in rage over her betrayal and it killed him for it.

 

(But it killed her too. It killed everyone who stood in its way and everyone who didn’t.)

 

Once, there was a boy, whose life was dreary and miserable. His home was a hovel with a leaky roof and ill-set windows that let any breeze go where it pleased. There was nothing great about that young soul, except perhaps his hunger. Oh, what hunger lived in his chest.

He would lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, and press his little fingers to the words on his stomach. Surely, his soulmate would understand. They would understand the gnawing emptiness inside of him, the grasping need for _more_. He wasn’t meant to be… _here_. He _couldn’t be_. Not with the voice at the back of his head that whispered secrets only he could hear. Not with those words as his own, no matter what mother said.

He had had to bother old miss Rokan so she’d teach him his letters but he could read them now. He wasn’t about to show _her_ his mark, after all. It was _his_. The only thing that was all his.

Black on his red skin, in the economical yet elegant swirls of a hand used to calligraphy a farmer’s son would never learn, it said,

 

**_Tell me more of this._ **

 

Tenebrae, still too small to reach the top of the rickety dinner table all by himself, would trace the simple phrase and refuse to believe that his future was decided, as his father claimed at the faintest hint of being questioned.

_When I meet them, I will know the answer._

There was no other outcome he would accept.

 

Once, there was a boy named Tenebrae and he stood over the corpses he had made of the people who raised him and he felt nothing.

Only hunger.

More. That was all that mattered. More, more, more. All should belong to him, all that crossed his path had to feed the hole in his chest. What good was it, if it didn’t?

Nothing could satisfy him, until he devoured the planet that gave birth to him whole, alongside most of those who dared call themselves his ‘peers’.

 

(For a while, that is enough.)

 

Vitiate is born from the skeleton of Nathema and he leaves his mortal shell behind. With it, he strips the last reminders of a dream long dead, a childish wish as forgotten as his parents' faces.

He is greater than any of the insignificant beings he rules for his own amusement. Isn’t the fact that he has no need of flesh to exist proof enough that whatever silly notions seared into it do not touch him anymore?

Though flesh does have its uses. It’s so damnably annoying to only be able to act by proxy of his servants, no matter how dutifully enslaved they are.

Years over years, Vitiate pursues the most forbidden secrets of the Dark. His hunger for power is endless. Next to it, nothing could hope to gain his focus. Perhaps that is where he goes wrong.

 

(So many wrongs, who could say which one is the one that was too much?

If his vessels time and again develop a strange shadow right below their sternum, certainly that is of no consequence.)

 

The Force is not so easily denied. Highborn or low, from slave to lord, all must meet their fate.

And so Vitiate does. In the darkest pit of Voss he comes face to face with his newest servant, there to free him from the prison he allowed himself to be lured into. He is resplendent in the colour of death and obedience, which makes for an odd but pleasing choice. Vitiate barely wastes a thought on him past ‘he will do’.

“Wrath. Come to me. I am your Emperor.” His Wrath, the sword to his Hand, rises at his word. He says naught but that suits. How Vitiate wishes more of his servants knew their place so well without _encouragement_. “Darth Baras plays the old games. He maneuvered me here, knowing this body could be bound to this place.”

Attentive subservience in every line, the Wrath nods his understanding. “ **Tell me more of this**.”

Oh, well. Curiosity is not the greatest flaw his new tool could have.

 

(He has all the answers but he has forgotten the question.)

 

Valkorion does not realize the depth of his folly until much, much later. Not until he casts off the regalia of the Immortal Emperor one night, and finds his attention drawn to the form of this favoured vessel of his recent years.

There’s a splotch on his stomach, livid as a bruise against his fair skin. That in itself is nothing new. The Force has never warned him of this development, it’s not a sign of a vessel’s failure to house his spirit. He made certain of that, the first time it happened.

It’s no more dangerous or Force-active than ink spilled carelessly and not yet washed off.

 

(Maybe that association should have given him pause sooner.)

 

For the first time in over a thousand years the conglomerate of colour has grown in definition. Smudged but still legible, it declares,

**_Tell me more of this._ **

Around Valkorion, the never-ending whisper of the Force has fallen silent.

_Impossible._

Not in all of his living memory-

_Who would dare!_

He’s better than this. It’s laughable to even think anyone could touch his spirit! No one could possibly reach his level! No one-

It rises against his awareness like the tide. A hundred hundred images and sounds, all in that same voice, the one that has always been with him.

 

(It sang him to sleep, so long ago. It murmured secrets and caution, the first which he took, the second which he ignored.

It screamed when he tore it from the aether on Nathema. Screamed and screamed, endlessly, as if he was rending it apart.)

 

_I am your faithful servant._

_Nothing will stand in my way. I won’t allow it._

_How dare you. We are your people!_

_You will pay for what you’ve done, I swear it._

White and blue, service and obedience, a defender of the Empire where he should have served no one but his lord and master. Should have served no one but his _Emperor_.

The Force’s babbling rises from background noise to cacophony and it sounds like _him_ , building itself drop by drop, word by word to a deafening crescendo that echoes from past to future.

 

 _I will_ **_never be yours_**! _I’d sooner_ **_die_**!

 

(Once, there was a boy named Tenebrae and he grew up to be a monster. But even monsters have a soul, however much they might tear it to shreds.

And if they have a soul, they can have a soulmate, don’t you think? I wonder what kind of person that would be.)

 

 

_Tenebrae, looking up at his mother with his dark, dark eyes, that scare all other children but not her, never her, asks the question all little boys eventually ask. “What kind of person could that be?”_

_“Oh, that’s easy, my child. Give it a little thought.”_

 

 

If he remembered his mother (his gentle, kind mother, screaming under his power, screaming, screaming, screaming), maybe Valkorion would know what has to come next. What was always going to come next, from the moment he betrayed that star-born soul that seared itself into his own.

Evil is a choice and he made it long ago. Made it again and again and he didn’t care, didn’t think he had to care.

No one can touch him. He’s greater than any of the pitiful creatures he rules and discards, any of the toy puppets he plays with.

They are nothing. They don’t matter. Not even one so dark, so bright, setting the galaxy to trembling in their wake.

Who could possibly be his equal?

 

If Valkorion remembered his mother, maybe he would not be so surprised when his Wrath defies him, again and again, no matter what he offers or threatens. No matter what he could give, what power he promises, it’s all waved aside.

He’s playing a _game_ , nothing more, just a thing to pass the time but it’s _baffling_ how wilful a wretch his future vessel proves to be. 

 

(‘ _No. No, no, no._ ’ the Force breathes at every turn and it’s _wrong_.

Do monsters have a heart? If they do, can it break?)

 

(Or did they break it themselves, long ago, and scatter the pieces?)

 

‘No,’ his Wrath tells him in word and deed and he walks right into the trap Valkorion sets for him. As he was always going to. As he always would have.

Of course. He is nothing but a plaything, after all. They all are.

 

(But he is different, isn’t he?)

 

Now, if Valkorion remembered his mother and the bedtime stories she used to tell him on long nights, maybe he would realize what Yon _really_ is before his Wrath brings him to his knees in the shattered remains of his own mind and memory.

 

 

_As all little boys who hear the story the first time, her son gives up on the riddle with a fierce scowl. She fights a smile. He’s not so different. “Why would a monster even have a soulmate?”_

_“Well, it must, sweetheart. Because you see, all monsters must die. No matter how great, or how small, eventually they must find their match.”_

 

 

“I gave you a second life, anointed you my Wrath, forged into a being worthy of the Eternal Throne! Without me, you are _nothing_.” Even now, he can’t believe it. _How_ did it come to this? This can’t possibly be. He’s eternal. He’s undefeatable. He’s _immortal_. How-

“I am not your Wrath, Valkorion. I am your executioner.” Truth, nothing but truth.

It wasn’t supposed to mean _this_. The sword he chose has wrenched itself from his hands and is demanding his blood.

His once-servant seems devoid of anything but resolve. Even his passion, the hate that should consume him and _give him strength_ , pales in comparison if he feels it at all.

 

(If monsters had a heart, would this one weep for how dull his handprints have left his bright, bright star?)

 

Laughable. “Remember me when your alliance burns to ash.” Valkorion will not die on his knees like a slave. He will not _resign himself_ to this _farce!_

Gathering all of his remaining power he rises-

The Wrath’s lightsaber slides home, as quick and easy as a sigh. In and all the way through, the way this kind of weapon is wont to. The hilt of it comes to rest against the same spot it once did, when they were both of flesh and blood, even if Valkorion’s was not his own.

Right there, where his ribcage ends.

 

(A blotch, like a bruise, perfectly round.)

 

 

_She bops her little boy's nose and delights in it when he wrinkles it in childish outrage. “And what can touch a dragon but a dragonslayer?”_

 

 

The creatures that call themselves his family are berating him but he has no attention to waste on them.

This… this can’t be.

_You were supposed to be **mine**._

The Force rings with that last, desperate little thought. So quiet Valkorion might miss it, if the whole world wasn’t falling silent around him, it whispers gentle as a kiss, _No._

 

 

_That’s not the only ending to the story, of course. Tomorrow, she will tell her son a different one._

_Only tomorrow never comes._

 

Maybe if Valkorion hadn’t killed his mother, she would have taught him that we each make our own endings, but we all have one. Maybe she would have taught him that endings _matter_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Force is rather sneaky and so is fate. Valkorion’s mark is left by (and stands for)
> 
>  
> 
> The Empire's Wrath – Defiance, specifically one Valkorion cannot conquer. 
> 
>  
> 
> After all he has done, how strange he would get his due from someone who earned themselves that title, don't you think?


End file.
